This post is relic of a time gone by. It’s a little strange, and I don’t think the way I did in this post anymore, but the ideas I came up with before are still a part of me, so I hope this is, at the very least, somewhat interesting.

The New Year’s Resolution

01 Jan 2015 - Buffalo Grove, Illinois - 02:00

When I think of new year’s day, I think of a lot of broken promises. Every year, people systematically make promises and break them. They say that they will quit smoking this year. That they will stop drinking this year. Eat healthier. Start going to the gym. Stop procrastinating. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

But for most people, this seems to go on ad infinitum. The same promises are made year after year. People remember the resolution they made last year and resolve to truly realize their goals this year. This year, things will be different. After all, things have to improve some time, right?

Wrong. Things never have to change. You can easily stay the same for your entire life, so long as no one has to care about you.

Let us take the example of the neurotic alcoholic. You may never be forced to actually stop drinking. Unless you’re such a drunk that you cause car accidents and mayhem everywhere, you could just be left to yourself in an apartment by yourself for your entire life, abandoned by your family because you couldn’t stop ruining the lives of your loved ones. They wouldn’t have to care about you. After that, unless you ruin the lives of everyone else in your proximity, no one has to care.

Of course, this is strictly hypothetical, but the point is that it’s a very real possibility that no one cares about you. So who’s going to do it? Who’s going to make you change?

The answer is the only one who is guaranteed to care so much about you as to make you change. Yep. You.

So if you’re the person who, like me, resolves the same time of every year to change the same flaws, realize (as I just did) that unless you really decide to change, things never will.

However, do not take this to mean that things will never change. Things don’t have to change, but that doesn’t mean they can’t. You can change them.

Just don’t expect things to happen by themselves.

I have realized this just recently. My goal of success has been a work in progress over the past several years of my life. I continue to prioritize what I think is important over what is actually important. I continue to prioritize my friends, online forums, and coding projects over my schoolwork and academics. I obviously realize the importance of the latter, but have yet to figure out how I will eventually force myself to take them more seriously.

This next year is the year I make myself change. Not because change is inevitable, but because change is feasible. It’s not impossible to change.